About a year ago, I posted a request for diachronic studies of relative
markers in spoken English. Although I received several useful references
for 20th c. English, no one knew of any studies of earlier spoken data,
so there's nothing to summarize. I went ahead and did my own study for
NWAVE 92 ('A diachronic study of relative markers in spoken and written
English'), which I have finally written up as a paper ... if anyone's
still interested, send me your address & I'll send you a copy.
Cathy Ball (cballguvax.georgetown.edu)

I have been following a discussion on another list
regarding the death of the word "fresman" (now "first-year"),
for the same reasons (though strangely slow in taking effect)
as with other "-man" compounds. As always, the arguments pro
and con have been throught-provoking.
But I wonder if we haven't been going about this whole
business of de-biasing gender in the language all wrong.
Instead of changing all the derivative words, wouldn't it be
more efficient, in this case, to establish a single new marked
form for the male gender -- something like "xoman/xomen",
"yoman/yomen" or "zoman/zomen" -- and leave the unmarked "man"
and all of its compounds to stand exclusively for both sexes.
Any comments?
Leland McCleary
Universidade de Sao Paulo (Brazil)
mcclearycat.cce.usp.br

A colleague of mine would like to know of any references which
relate to the importance of intonation in early language acquisition
for some NLP work he is currently undertaking. I would be very
grateful to anyone who could suggest any suitable references.
Yours
Kirk Sullivan